MONTREAL - The Montreal World Film Festival (MWFF) continues to focus on world cinema and emerging filmmakers in lieu of the big stars and big budget films. It has become both a means of survival and, increasingly, a raison d’être for the event, which presents 432 films from 80 countries, from Aug. 23 to Sept. 3.

Of those: 212 are features, including 110 world or international premieres; 16 medium length films; 144 short films; and 16 films as part of the Canadian Student Film Festival.

Claude Gagnon’s Karakara is the only Quebec film in the festival’s World Competition. The Japanese-Canadian co-production stars Gabriel Arcand as a retired Quebec university professor who makes a life-changing trip around Okinawa with a 40-year-old Japanese woman who has left her husband.

The MWFF has had trouble attracting top-tier Quebec films for the past few years. The issue was a topic of discussion at Tuesday’s press conference.

“We saw a few (Quebec films),” said festival vice president Danièle Cauchard, searching for an explanation. “Some come out before or after the festival. Exposing yourself in competition can be risky. The shock can be more rude than in a less competitive context. There’s also the phenomenon of Quebec films being helped (more) by their local release. The festival doesn’t help for marketing. It’s better to put on a good marketing campaign than to let journalists be mean (by screening a film in competition).”

Other films in competition include: Bernard Rose’s Two Jacks (U.S.A.), starring Sienna Miller, Billy Zane, Danny Huston and Jacqueline Bisset in the story of a veteran filmmaker’s reticent return to Hollywood; Wings (China), by Yazhou Yang and Bo Yang, about the relationship between a young surrogate mother and a handicapped man; Yasuo Furuhata’s Dearest (Japan), about a woman’s posthumous request to her husband; Sabine Hiebler and Gerhard Ertl’s Coming of Age (Austria), about an elderly couple that bucks convention to be together; Krsto Papi’s Flower Square (Croatia), about a bourgeois family’s problems with the mafia; Imanol Uribe’s Orange Honey, set amid social conflicts in 1950s Spain; Dito Tsintsadze’s Invasion (Germany-Austria) about a widower who is infringed upon by some pushy, alleged relatives; Safy Nebbou’s Bad Seeds (France), about two teens who kidnap their high school teacher; and Ismail Gunes’s Where the Fire Burns (Turkey), about a couple that decides to save the family honour by killing their pregnant daughter.

The competition also features four films circling the topic of the second World War. Marcin Krzysztalowicz’s Manhunt (Poland) follows armed Polish partisans awaiting orders to kill Nazis troops in a Polish forest in 1943; Alexander Proshkin’s Expiation (Russia) is a love story set in the southern USSR in 1946, as a town tries to come to grips with the aftermath of the war; Franziska Schlotterer’s Closed Season (Germany-Israel) about a married German farmer who hides a young Jewish man in his barn, with an unusual caveat; and Jan Troell’s The Last Sentence (Sweden), about a Swedish journalist who opposed the Nazis.

The lone Quebec inclusion in the First Films World Competition is Babek Aliassa’s Halal Butcher Shop, about a young Muslim couple that struggles against tradition to open a business.

The festival’s Focus on World Cinema section includes over 100 features. The previously-announced opening film is Lisheng Lin’s comedy-thriller Million Dollar Crocodile (China); the closing film is James Huth’s Happiness Never Comes Alone (France).

The Montreal World Film Festival takes place from Aug. 23 to Sept. 3. Tickets cost $10 per film; $70 for a pack of 10 tickets. Tickets go on sale Aug. 18. Festival passes also available. Call 514-848-3883 or visit ffm-montreal.org

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Montreal World Film Festival: Focus is on emerging filmmakers, not big stars and budgets

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